Why The US Has No High-Speed Rail

China has the largest and fastest

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network in the world. The country has more than 30,000 kilometers of

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ways, the vast majority of which were built in the last decade. Japan's bullet trains can reach speeds of nearly 200 miles per hour. And it dates back to the 1960s. They have become a staple for domestic travel and have carried more than 9 billion people without any casualties. France began TGV high-speed train service in 1981 and the rest of Europe quickly followed. And high-speed rail is expanding rapidly around the world in places like India, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and Morocco.

And then there is the United States. The United States used to be one of the world leaders in railroads, but after World War II there was a massive change. If you look at the United States before 1945, we had a very extensive railroad system everywhere. Everything was going very well, except that a number of companies in the automobile and oil industries decided that, to have a prosperous future, they really needed to help phase out all railroads and get us all into cars. Rigid rails permanently embedded in paving stones were paved to allow for smooth, comfortable transportation by diesel coach.

General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil, and a few other companies came together and were able to purchase all the streetcar systems in the country and then quickly began phasing out service and literally dismantling all the systems over a span of about 10 years. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill to create the National Interstate System. He allocated about $25 billion to build 41,000 miles of roads. The federal government paid 90% of that amount, the states covered the remaining 10, and the railroad fell by the wayside. Don't you see that this highway means a whole new way of life for children?

And a way of life that we have the opportunity to help plan and build. We spent a huge amount of dollars building automotive infrastructure in the mid-20th century and we're still stuck with that development model. We went from a country with rail service to a nation dependent on cars in the 1960s. We have become a car culture and it is difficult to get out of that cycle. Not to mention the fact that in our political system we have very powerful oil lobbyists, automaker lobbyists, aviation lobbyists, all the entities that high-speed rail would have to compete with.

This is the American dream of freedom on wheels. In the United States we have an average of about 850 cars per thousand inhabitants, in China it is only 250. And we have never gone backwards. But according to some, this country's transportation ecosystem is reaching a tipping point. When you look at what is happening with corridor development, there are again states across the United States that recognize that they are running out of room to expand their highways or interstates. There are limits at airports, there is congestion in aviation, so what are the options? A better rail system is one of them and could bring important benefits.

It is largely an environmental good to move from air and automobile traffic to electrified high-speed rail. That is a way to travel with much lower emissions. When the high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona in Spain came into operation, I mean, air travel between those cities plummeted and everyone switched to the high-speed train, which was very convenient. People were happier. They were not forced to change, they did so because it was a better option to take the high-speed train. There's sort of a rule of thumb for trips that are less than three or four hours from city to city and that generally ends up with about 80 or 90 percent of the travel market coming from aviation.

Where rail exists and is convenient and high-speed, it is very popular. I think America is waking up to the idea that rail is a good investment for transportation infrastructure. One survey showed that 63% of Americans would use high-speed rail if it were available to them. The younger ones love it even more. Right now, the main passenger rail option in the US is Amtrak. It operates as a for-profit company, but the federal government is its majority shareholder. Train systems that reach maximum speeds of more than 110 to 150 miles per hour are generally considered high speed, and only one of Amtrak's lines could be considered such.

That's their Acela line in the Northeast Corridor that runs between D.C., New York and Boston. One of the challenges we face is that the Northeast Corridor has a lot of curvature, a lot of geometry. We actually operate Acela Express on an alignment that in some places was designed back in the 19th century and therefore was never designed for high-speed rail. And while the Acela line can reach up to 150 miles per hour, it only does so for 34 miles of its 457-mile stretch. Its average speed between New York and Boston is about 65 miles per hour, which contrasts sharply with China's high-speed rail system, which regularly travels at more than 200 miles per hour.

But some people are trying to fix it. In 2008, California voted in favor of high-speed rail. Now, a decade later, construction is underway in the state's Central Valley. And right now it's the only truly high-speed rail system under construction in the U.S. Ultimately, the high-speed rail is a 520-mile project linking San Francisco to Los Angeles and Anaheim, that's the phase one. And it is a project that is being built in blocks. So the one behind me is the biggest building block that we started with, this 119 mile segment. This segment will go from Bakersfield to Merced. Ultimately, the plan is to build a line from San Francisco to Anaheim, just south of Los Angeles.

But as it stands, the state is nearly $50 billion short of what it really needs to do so. The current project, as planned, would cost too much and, respectfully, take too much time. There has been very little oversight and little transparency. We have the ability to complete a high-speed rail link between Merced and Bakersfield. After Gavin Newsom gave that speech, President Trump threatened to pull federal funding for the project. We will continue to look for other funds. We hope that the federal government will resume funding and provide new funds to the project. I think in the future, as the federal government has funded major infrastructure builds over time, they will redirect money to high-speed rail because, in fact, it's not just California but other states are interested as well. in high-speed rail systems.

To complete the entire line as planned, the official estimate is now more than $77 billion and it is unclear where the money will come from. So why is it so expensive? Part of the problem in California, the high price, is going through the Tehachapi, a very expensive tunnel, or the Pacheco Pass to get to San José from the Central Valley. You know, eastern China, the plains of Japan where they built the Shinkansen, those are all places where they did, they didn't incur the high drilling and tunneling expenses that we faced, so the costs are different. And much of the money is spent before construction can even begin.

Just in this small segment here we are dealing with the private owner, we are dealing with a railroad company, we are dealing with the state agency and therefore all the coordination. So we're dealing with a utility company, just in this little section; We had to relocate two miles of highway and that was about $150 million per mile. So there are a lot of moving pieces wherever we start building. China is the place that many people compare it to. They have about 29,000 kilometers of high-speed train and 20 years ago they did not have any. So how have they been able to do it so quickly?

And part of this is that the state owns the land, they don't have private property rights like we have in the U.S. There aren't the regulations that we have in terms of labor laws and environmental regulations that increase costs. It also delays projects. For some reason, I have never seen an adequate explanation for why the costs of building public transportation or many large infrastructure projects are dramatically higher than in other parts of the world, including other advanced countries. But the bottom line is that we are really bad at building things cheaply and quickly in the United States in general.

So not only is the rail infrastructure expensive, but so is the entire transportation infrastructure. Just the physical investment in the highway will typically be 5 to 8 to 10 million per mile, but if you add in seismic issues and land acquisition and utilities and environmental mitigation and soil remediation and factors like that, it can reach 100 or 200 million. one mile. High-speed rail figures can vary between 20 and 80 million per mile. The main reason the United States is behind on high-speed rail is primarily money. We don't commit the money needed to build these systems, it's really as simple as that. And it is largely a political question.

We don't have political leaders who really want to commit the necessary dollars. There are many forces in America that really don't want railroads to become our primary mode of transportation, especially because it will affect the number of passengers on airplanes and affect the use of automobiles. Then there's politics, message shaping, and then direct advertising, and all three coordinate and work together to keep America focused on cars and not railroads. Some of the earliest support for the railroad came from the Nixon administration. Some of the original capital subsidies and operating subsidies for urban transportation came from the Republican Party, so I think it's only more recently that maybe this has changed and more liberal-leaning people who care about the climate and a lot of urban issues have really advocated investing heavily in rail.

If you had Democratic leadership in the Senate and a different president or potentially some leverage to get a president to sign a new budget bill with a few dollars for high-speed rail, that could override those objections from Republicans in Congress. But I think it's mostly ideological. They are great on the roads. They are big on things like toll roads. They simply do not want the government to spend dollars on these types of projects and see it as something that European socialist countries do, but not something that should be done in the United States, a car-loving country.

In my opinion, it would take a very strong federal commitment, almost a kind of large-scale national commitment to a post-World War II interstate highway. For this reason, some high-speed rail projects try to avoid public financing altogether. One company, Texas Central, plans to build a bullet train from Houston to Dallas without using a cent of taxpayer money. We'll take what is a laborious and unreliable four-hour drive, if you're lucky, and turn it into a reliable and safe 90 minutes. And when we look at it as a data-driven business plan, this is the right place to build the first high-speed rail in the United States.

The Texas project is backed by profit-motivated investors and will use proven Japanese rail technology. Texas Central's goal is to complete the project in 2025. Another private company is even further along with its rail system, in Florida. It is expanding its high-speed rail from Miami to Orlando. Orlando is the most visited city in the United States. Miami is the most visited international city in the United States. It's too far to drive, it's too short to fly, we had the rail link and that was really the genesis of the project. Wes Edens has invested heavily in the Florida rail project, which was formerly called Brightline.

Brightline recently changed its name to Virgin Trains when the company partnered with Richard Branson's Virgin Group. The Brightline team, now called Virgin Trains, has proven it can work. People really want to get out of their cars and would love to ride trains. To achieve profitability, the company sacrificed speed to save money. If you really want to go at high speed, you have to adjust separately. Basically, you have to build a 250 mile bridge that you then put a train on. That sounds difficult and expensive, and it is both. So, a big difference in cost, a big difference in construction time, and a not-so-big reduction inthe service.

And now technology companies are getting involved in infrastructure projects. In the Pacific Northwest, a high-speed rail plan is underway to connect Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. Microsoft contributed $300,000 to research the project. Our number one priority on Microsoft's side is also to really see and pursue this high-speed rail effort. If you look at the United States and where all the Fortune 500 companies are, they are all in a similar situation to Microsoft. Housing is unaffordable and traffic congestion is epic. It's very difficult to get somewhere and get employees. Therefore, high-speed rail can solve this exact same problem in many regions of the United States.

So is the private sector the answer to bringing high-speed rail to the United States? If the private sector wants to invest in transportation and as long as it does not affect public taxpayers, I see no problem with the private sector moving forward. And I think there's some truth that the private sector will have a lot more incentive to speed up construction and do things faster and cheaper. That said, the private sector still has to operate with the oversight and regulatory responsibilities of the public sector. So, for example, environmental review does not disappear just because it is a private sector project.

Labor standards do not disappear. The difference is that they don't have to keep trying to sell a project to the public to vote on tax increases or bond sales. Some people remain optimistic that the United States can catch up with the rest of the world and have a robust, high-speed rail system. We're building that right now behind us. This 119 mile segment that we want to expand with. The money we already have for 170 miles will serve a population of 3 million people in the Central Valley. So not only do I believe it, but it is under construction. A lot of activity is taking shape now, state railway authorities have been formed in four or five states, so they are now taking it up as a legitimate project and moving ahead.

I think the future is very bright for train travel in the United States. There is broad consensus with our political leaders in the industry that it is time to pass an infrastructure bill and that will certainly help boost American rail. Others are much less confident. I wish I was a little more optimistic. It is very difficult to make the economy work here. No one has adopted it as a major part of their political platform. There are simply too many other difficult and pressing problems we face. I don't see us catching up with the world. It would take such a massive infusion of dollars to make that happen in California and likely eliminate a number of environmental requirements and some other government regulations that hinder the rapid deployment of these projects in favor of other values.

My own instinct tells me that it will be decades and decades before you can take a single-seat trip from San Diego to Sacramento or San Francisco. It would be nice if there was just one simple answer: It's this litany of factors adding up collectively that makes this so difficult to achieve in the United States.